{"id":7714,"date":"2006-06-17T10:43:56","date_gmt":"2006-06-17T14:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7714"},"modified":"2006-06-17T10:43:56","modified_gmt":"2006-06-17T14:43:56","slug":"westmorelands-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/westmorelands-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Westmoreland’s defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all had a little fun yesterday poking fun<\/a> at Rep. [tag]Lynn Westmoreland [\/tag](R-Ga.), who wants Congress to endorse the [tag]Ten Commandments[\/tag], but when asked by Stephen Colbert to name them, admitted, “I can’t name ’em all<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Reader D.C. alerted me this morning to the official response<\/a> from Westmoreland’s office.<\/p>\n

[Reached Friday, Westmoreland press secretary Brian Robinson] said that, during the interview, Westmoreland actually got up to about seven of the Ten Commandments before petering out, but that part was edited out.<\/p>\n

“I challenge anybody outside of the clergy to try to (name them all),” Robinson said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“The Colbert Report” showed Westmoreland naming three, and according to his office, he actually named seven. That’s better, I suppose, but the bottom line remains the same: asked to name the Ten Commandments, Westmoreland couldn’t.<\/p>\n

But what about the press secretary’s second point, that only pastors can name all 10? It’s a pretty weak argument. According to Westmoreland and the legislation he supports in Congress, the Decalogue includes the nation’s guiding principles. They offer instructions to moral people on how to behave. They’re so important, Westmoreland and lawmakers like him believe Congress should ignore church-state separation and officially endorse and promote the Commandments in the House and Senate chambers. And now Westmoreland’s office believes no one can actually name all 10? Shouldn’t Westmoreland have bothered to commit them to memory a long time ago?<\/p>\n

If Westmoreland had been quizzed, apropos of nothing, I’d happily give him a pass. But he’s the one who brought this up by pushing the legislation in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all had a little fun yesterday poking fun at Rep. [tag]Lynn Westmoreland [\/tag](R-Ga.), who wants Congress to endorse the [tag]Ten Commandments[\/tag], but when asked by Stephen Colbert to name them, admitted, “I can’t name ’em all.” Reader D.C. alerted me this morning to the official response from Westmoreland’s office. [Reached Friday, Westmoreland press secretary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}